Annals of bad ideas: Gun range to serve booze

The owners of a Georgia gun shop are building a new shooting range that will feature a bar. The rationale: Since the state already allows licensed gun owners to bring their weapons into a restaurant, why not serve alcohol right at the range? Safety feature: The owners say imbibing will be limited to an apres-shooting activity. The local city council approve the alcohol permit 14-1.

30 Responses

Many Rod and Gun Clubs have bars….Ignorant people will assume that people are drinking and shooting , when in fact clubs like these are just as social in nature as any other.They often throw BBq’s,holiday parties and fundraisers. Men and women that join gun clubs are educated and responsible.

The firing range will be indoors and the owners claim to have a strict policy on readmission to the range after drinking. The risks should be far less than, say, a bar in a firehouse or serving alcohol to armed, off-duty law enforcement officers.

This is no big deal. I don’t see anything wrong with it. People that own guns legally are not the problem. They are not the ones doing the shootings in Albany, Schenectady and Troy. It’s the illegal gun owners you have to worry about. And you won’t find them in a rod & gun club.

I grew up around guns (my dad was a trap shooting champion), and I learned respect and rules by the time I was 10 years old. I remember the local gun clubs having alcohol available, but it always was for consumption after everyone was done shooting. No alcohol was ever allowed on the ranges and if someone behaved inappropriately s/he was quickly confronted. Far more dangerous, as noted above, are people drinking and driving home from the bars. I do not know of any incidents involving shootings or gun-related accidents at gun clubs, related to alcohol. I imagine there have been a few over the years, but nothing like the horrors of drunk driving.

I agree that this is not that big of an issue – My ex husband belonged to a rod and gun club – safety is of paramount importance – I went to Sneaky Pete’s in Albany once and they had security searching for guns and knives and stuff like that – who is to say that people with guns and knives don’t keep them in their cars and then get bombed and take them out and use them – the gun club is probably safer -

Seems we had an armed Rensselaer officer getting drunk at a club in Troy, crashed his car into a construction watertank, then later had a .23 BAC, enough for 3 drunks.
Yet members at a Georgia club can’t have a drink after shooting at a range, with no readmission to the range after stopping at the bar?

I remember that a local firehouse was losing members to a neighboring one, as the Averill Park firehouse had a bar and the West Sand Lake one didn’t. West Sand Lake ended up putting a bar in.
Then you had alcohol and heavy ungainly equipment mixed together at both places.

In a year, guns murdered 468 people in Australia, England, Germany and in Canada put together, and 9,484 in the United States. Combined they have two-thirds of our population but 20 times fewer gun murders.

Put another way, they have one gun murder per 405,000 people. We have one per 31,000.

#14 Not all gun owners, and people that see there is nothing wrong with this are fanatics. And this is not about how many people are murdered by guns. Although I would like to know what percentage from your numbers were murdered by guns that where not owned legally.
This is about a gun club that is going to have a bar on premises. There is nothing wrong with that when done right. Read #4. If you do your research you might find that gun owners belonging to gun clubs are not the ones shooting people. And #6 . . . living down south and drinking Coors Light does not make a person a “redneck”.

Gun clubs I’ve been/belonged to usually have rules about firearms being in a case when off the range. Its a simple way of ensuring safety for others. The clubs I’ve belonged to have a “No Alcohol” policy on shooting nights, and I’ve never seen it violated. This club is looking for more business and trying legal means to do so in its area, not to make a national statement. If you want to see a bad result, look at the drunks driving home from country clubs. We are safe from their golf clubs, but not the 4000lbs of death they are wielding. I doubt the Ga gun club proves any more dangerous.